As you step out onto the ice sheet, cold air hits you in the face like a fist of needles. Nothing quite prepares you for Antarctica. It is a behemoth. One and a half times the size of the United States, 98 percent of its surface is covered in ice. It is the coldest, windiest, and driest continent on Earth. We had arrived at Novolazarevskaya, a Russian base station on the eastern coast of Antarctica that services scientific-research projects, some tourism, and the occasional expedition, like the one we were about to begin: a three-month traversal of Antarctica without assistance and using only land kites and skis. Transit to "Novo" which is little more than a collection of prefab barracks, a mess tent, and an outhouse, is made aboard the Russian flying-cargo workhorse the Ilyushin-76. The plane – window-paneled nose makes it a clear pick out of a lineup, but inside, the accommodations are strictly functional. Exposed pipes and ducts are held together with aging, discolored tape; passengers and cargo share the same space; and there are luggage tag. No effort has been made to soundproof the cabin (the crew distributes ear plugs before takeoff), and the bathroom is a portable toilet strapped aft of the plane – literally. Our six-hour night flight from Cape Town, South Africa, to the frigid eastern coast of Antarctica hinted at the spartan life of an expedition on the ice. My partner for this trip, Eric McNair-Landry, has a medium build and a robust aptitude to endure punishing stretches in the cold. He grew up in Canada's northern territories and, at 26, has a promising future in the expedition world. An engineer by training, Eric is happiest far away from a power grid. Eric and I had trained for this trip on Greenland. We had spent 42 days crossing its south-north axis, where we set a new record for the longest distance traveled with kites over 24 hours, at 370 miles (a journey chronicled in a 2010 article in 'Men's Journal'). Following two years of planning, our mission has three objectives. If successful, we will be the first to independently reach the Antarctic Pole of Inaccessibility (POI) – the farthest point from the continent's coasts – using kites and skis. The 1,120-mile stretch from Novo to the heart of Antarctica makes it arguably the most remote and difficult point of access on the planet. Only five missions have ever reached the POI – and only twice since 1964. And all but one were motorized. Paul Landry, the famed polar guide (and Eric's father), led a team there in 2006, also using kites. Theirs was a one-way trip, however, and it also benefitted from air support. The conditions in Antarctica are fairly predictable: often windy and always very, very cold. The danger comes mostly from human error, failure of equipment, and overreaching in one's goals. Even if you know what to expect, a mistake can still lead to disaster. Losing a tent while setting it up in a windstorm is obviously lethal, but a failed solar panel can also be critical. On this type of mission, you plan for the worst and hope for the best, and when dark thoughts creep into your mind, you keep them to yourself. With more than 400 pounds in tow each, our loads weighed more than double what Landry's team pulled, and for us, the POI would be the first stop of our mission. Our second objective was to make the first-ever unassisted and nonmotorized crossing of the 550 miles separating the POI from the South Pole, one of the least-known routes in Antarctica. Third, we would complete the first-ever east-west transcontinental crossing of Antarctica via two of its poles, a distance of more than 2,500 miles. All of this would take place between November 2011 and February 2012, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott's historic, and tragic, race to the South Pole. We had spent two days in Cape Town meticulously packing our sledges. We would be bringing with us two eight-foot sledges and two four-footers, as well as four kites of different sizes. We also had ample stores of dehydrated food, skis, boots, communications devices, photo gear – and three pairs of underwear each. We quickly secured 35 liters of white fuel for our cooking stoves from Novo's station manager, strapped on our skis, clipped the pulling trace onto our harnesses, and took our first steps of the expedition. Or at least attempted to. Eric and I are seasoned adventurers, prepared both physically and mentally for the challenge of pulling heavy loads in extreme conditions, where temperatures can often reach below -50 degrees F. But within minutes, our muscles were gorged with blood, and sweat was beading all over our bodies. We had started near sea level, and before we could get the kites in the air, we would have to ascend 9,500 feet up a glacier and through multiple crevasse fields to reach a favorable wind line on the plateau. It seemed incomprehensible that we would be able to achieve that. Each irregularity in the terrain was an opportunity for the sledges to snag and abruptly bring the effort to a stop. By the end of the first day, we had covered only one and a half miles. It took us three days to lose sight of the station. "Convicts don't work this hard," Eric said on one of our short food breaks. But we advanced steadily, gaining ground and elevation amid an arresting landscape of vertical mountains piercing skyward through the ice. Slowly, even the tallest peak was swallowed up by the rising ice cap, until the last of the mountains disappeared from sight. Other than storms, air movement on an ice cap is dominated by katabatic winds. Katabatic, from the Greek word katabatikos, or "going downhill" refers to the movement of air down an ice slope. When cool air reaches the ice, it gains density. This heavier air will roll down a grade, if there is one, governed by the same law that hit Newton in the head with the apple. The katabatic process makes wind direction fairly predictable on an ice cap, and with a careful choice of route, it favors kite-skiing expeditions. Unlike in cross-country skiing, kites help you cover vast areas relatively fast. Due to its size, remoteness, and the antagonistic nature of its environment, Antarctica remains the least explored landmass in the world. Other than the katabatic winds, though, the history of Antarctic expeditions begins and ends with the sastrugi. Sure, there is the cold, the wind, and the desolation. But the sastrugi – ice features of varying size and shape, sculpted by the powerful winds – define the landscape. Row upon row of closely stacked ice ridges make travel intensely challenging. On a kiting expedition anywhere, the sastrugi will fray your joints and rattle your fillings. But in Antarctica, they will destroy your equipment, your bones, and sometimes your spirit – pretty much in that order, as we would soon find out. This year was especially bad for the sastrugi. Around the same time as our trip, two other expeditions had been forced to stop, and a third had requested an airlift to a further deployment because of the sastrugi. It wasn't long before the tip of my ski jammed into the head of one, and in a flash, I received a lesson in physics: The force displaced while kiting is equal to the mass of the sledge plus your weight, in addition to the pull of the kite, which is measured in speed, or momentum. In this case, when you stick a ski into the ice, all that force is directed underfoot, and under such conditions, things tend to break. Breakage is part of all expeditions; how much redundancy you build into your supplies requires a delicate balance between tacking on extra weight and rolling the dice. Experience helps, but luck also determines whether you will go on or abort the mission. Screws and epoxy held my ski together for less than a day, but by chance, and against the advice of my young partner, I had brought a replacement, and we managed to resume the trek. Skis are not the only thing that can break, of course – a lesson I learned on day six of the expedition. For the first stage, I had chosen to bring two smaller sledges to spread the weight and separate it in dual loads if needed. On paper this seemed like a good idea. In reality, having "the kids" – our nickname for the smaller sledges – in tow only complicated matters. Not only did they increase the chance of snagging a nose on a bad piece of sastrugi; while kiting, they doubled the fishtailing effect, adding drag and pull to the harness while killing speed. Both sets of sledges would occasionally nose-plant violently into ridges, bringing me to a sudden stop. I would be squeezed by the harness until my eyes bugged out, or I'd be slammed sideways onto the ice. It was on one such occasion that I heard a sound that still resonates in my head: a crack coming from my chest, followed by a sharp, agonizing pain, as if a knife had been lodged between my ribs. I attempted to wiggle the harness and breathed deeply, but there was no shaking the pain. Everything I did made it worse. I landed the kite, struggled to secure the lines, and dropped to my knees, the pain overtaking my body with each breath. I stretched my torso and could feel bony clanking. The signs were unmistakable: broken ribs.